A Judgment In Heaven Poem by Francis Thompson

Athwart the sod which is treading for God * the poet paced with hissplendid eyes;Paradise-verdure he stately passes * to win to the Father ofParadise,Through the conscious and palpitant grasses * of inter-tangledrelucent dyes.

The angels a-play on its fields of Summer * (their wild wingsrustled his guides' cymars)Looked up from disport at the passing comer, * as they pelted eachother with handfuls of stars;And the warden-spirits with startled feet rose, * hand on sword, bytheir tethered cars.

With plumes night-tinctured englobed and cinctured, * of Saints, hisguided steps held onTo where on the far crystelline pale * of that transtellar Heaventhere shoneThe immutable crocean dawn * effusing from the Father's Throne.

Through the reverberant Eden-ways * the bruit of his great adventdriven,Back from the fulgent justle and press * with mighty echoing so wasgiven,As when the surly thunder smites * upon the clanged gates of Heaven.

Over the bickering gonfalons, * far-ranged as for Tartarean wars,Went a waver of ribbed fire *--as night-seas on phosphoric barsLike a flame-plumed fan shake slowly out * their ridgy reach ofcrumbling stars.

At length to where on His fretted Throne * sat in the heart of Hisaged dominionsThe great Triune, and Mary nigh, * lit round with spears of theirhauberked minions,The poet drew, in the thunderous blue * involved dread of thosemounted pinions.

As in a secret and tenebrous cloud * the watcher from the disquietearthAt momentary intervals * beholds from its ragged rifts break forthThe flash of a golden perturbation, * the travelling threat of awitched birth;

With beauty, not terror, through tangled error * of night-diptplumes so burned their charge;Swayed and parted the globing clusters * so,--disclosed from theirkindling marge,Roseal-chapleted, splendent-vestured, * the singer there where God'slight lay large.

Hu, hu! a wonder! a wonder! see, * clasping the singer's gloriesclingsA dingy creature, even to laughter * cloaked and clad in patchworkthings,Shrinking close from the unused glows * of the seraphs'versicoloured wings.

A rhymer, rhyming a futile rhyme, * he had crept for convoy throughEden-waysInto the shade of the poet's glory, * darkened under his prevalentrays,Fearfully hoping a distant welcome * as a poor kinsman of his lays.

The angels laughed with a lovely scorning: *--'Who has done thissorry deed inThe garden of our Father, God? * 'mid his blossoms to sow this weedin?Never our fingers knew this stuff: * not so fashion the looms ofEden!'

The singer bowed his brow majestic, * searching that patchworkthrough and through,Feeling God's lucent gazes traverse * his singing-stoling and spirittoo:The hallowed harpers were fain to frown * on the strange thing come'mid their sacred crew,Only the singer that was earth * his fellow-earth and his own selfknew.

But the poet rent off robe and wreath, * so as a sloughing serpentdoth,Laid them at the rhymer's feet, * shed down wreath and raiment both,Stood in a dim and shamed stole, * like the tattered wing of a mustymoth.

'Thou gav'st the weed and wreath of song, * the weed and wreath aresolely Thine,And this dishonest vesture * is the only vesture that is mine;The life I textured, Thou the song *--MY handicraft is not divine!'

He wrested o'er the rhymer's head * that garmenting which wroughthim wrong;A flickering tissue argentine * down dripped its shivering silverslong:-'Better thou wov'st thy woof of life * than thou didst weave thywoof of song!'

Never a chief in Saintdom was, * but turned him from the Poet then;Never an eye looked mild on him * 'mid all the angel myriads ten,Save sinless Mary, and sinful Mary *--the Mary titled Magdalen.

'Take, I pray, yon chaplet up, * thrown down ruddied from his head.'They took the roseal chaplet up, * and they stood astonished:Every leaf between their fingers, * as they bruised it, burst andbled.

'See his torn flesh through those rents; * see the punctures roundhis hair,As if the chaplet-flowers had driven * deep roots in to nourishthere -Lord, who gav'st him robe and wreath, * WHAT was this Thou gav'stfor wear?'